Why isn’t my SSH Key working?

If your SSH key isn’t working, it’s usually because it’s not formatted correctly. The most common two things we see are: –

1. The key is broken over several lines instead of being one long line.
2. It’s missing ssh-rsa at the beginning.

There should be a space between ssh-rsa and the key itself – example below.

Another reason it may not work is that you’ve already assigned that key to a system user, and you can’t push the same key to a server more than once.

INCORRECT FORMATTING EXAMPLE

This is an example of a key that is NOT formatted correctly:

ssh-rsa 
AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEAxznqQ5ic/ctZi1AKS6ysTYo+v3fsADTLup
HqvvtgK0WfFtFYEvdAKjIz1abMXH5srFs6mqDJ56jxtxc9alBnINanKsnYmEzP
3cdcJTREA/BUoShSonXNL3pJs8dtJovldejw6QPB2S2Wnt4FfFOHidwilN15xb
K3PrPqdGyqrmvMkqXRRABfosAzhdLa9t26P9lhcKhEIWmeQipWgjVyNPkkEraa
7HkIPC04t8rjuMtBtHkZ0iv6SqU14d7pODcVR6/nPzm2SqTpDJ8LV8kx1v0ZHo
1k2XYHd6jCB38ns0kjVbPPmFhwUDoLaZa6esKAnJ+SnAc3JExL7Mw1ZtfEjQ==
 rsa-key-20200519

CORRECT FORMATTING EXAMPLE

This is an example of what an SSH key looks like when correctly formatted:

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEAxznqQ5ic/ctZi1AKS6ysTYo+v3fsADTLupHqvvtgK0WfFtFYEvdAKjIz1abMXH5srFs6mqDJ56jxtxc9alBnINanKsnYmEzP3cdcJTREA/BUoShSonXNL3pJs8dtJovldejw6QPB2S2Wnt4FfFOHidwilN15xbK3PrPqdGyqrmvMkqXRRABfosAzhdLa9t26P9lhcKhEIWmeQipWgjVyNPkkEraa7HkIPC04t8rjuMtBtHkZ0iv6SqU14d7pODcVR6/nPzm2SqTpDJ8LV8kx1v0ZHo1k2XYHd6jCB38ns0kjVbPPmFhwUDoLaZa6esKAnJ+SnAc3JExL7Mw1ZtfEjQ== rsa-key-20200519